Jurassic World / Avengers Lego

Yesterday it was announced that the Lego juggernaut will continue to roll through peoples wallets with two new games to be released this year, Jurassic World and Marvel's Avengers.

Marvel's Avengers will follow the story of the two films whilst Jurassic World will follow not only the upcoming fourth film but also the third film. Avengers was to be expected at some point with the previous releases of Marvel Superheroes and three Batman/DC games but Jurassic World was a pleasant surprise, a pleasant surprise that will also most likely rake in the money.

Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness / Pac-Man World (GBA) review - Part two

I decided at the last minute to split the post into two posts due to the length so here is the review for Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness.

A year after Pac-Man World was released developed Namco and Full Fat released Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness a short and fun game for the PS1, N64, Dreamcast and Game Boy Advance. Playing differently to Pac-Man World which was a platform game Maze Madness is a four-direction puzzle game which plays like the original Pac-Man game.

Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness / Pac-Man World (GBA) review - Part one

Back in 1999 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pac-Man developers Namco and Full Fat released Pac-Man World and a year later released Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness, two games that are rather fun to play on the GBA.

Ms. Pac-Man was originally released on the PS1, N64 and Dreamcast whilst Pac-Man was only released on the PS1 before being ported to the GBA. Due to this the games are slightly different to their console counterparts and have less features but this doesn't make them any less enjoyable as far as I'm aware. The main difference is the lack of multi-player which is no big loss though it's a shame that some levels have had to be left out alongside the original Pac-Man which would have been a nice extra to play on a handheld.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters review

"If anybody wants to see, there's a Donkey Kong kill screen coming up."

I imagine by now that anyone with a vested interest in video games will have watched The King of Kong, unfortunately I myself have only just gotten round to watching it and I wish that I had watched it sooner.

Now before I go on I'll just say that there is controversy that surrounds this film so for the purpose of the review I''m just going to concentrate on the actual film and will mention the controversy at the end.

Intros I like 2

Video by neodarkid

Discontinuation of Club Nintendo

Today it was announced that Nintendo is to discontinue Club Nintendo the place where you can go and spend all of your collected stars from the scratch cards contained in select games and consoles.

It's kind of a shame that it is to be closed down as there can sometimes be some good stuff on there such as the Link and Epona statue, the celebration cards and especially the SNES Wii controller that I managed to scrape enough stars together to get a while back.

Intros I like 1

Video by EnciclopediaLusa

Nintendisco Interview

Back in 2011 I wrote some stuff for a magazine called NES-Bit (which you can download from this post here) which sadly did not make it past two issues. Issue three was in the pipeline for release in 2012 but never materialised. When issue three was being worked on I interviewed the guys from Nintendisco/Gamerdisco about Nintendisco and it never got published, it has been gathering dust ever since so I thought that I would drag it out and put it on here for people to read.

Nintendo Direct 14.01.2015

The first Nintendo Direct of the year and it had some good looking stuff included.

Here are the games that I'm looking forward to.

Aliens Infestation (DS) review

Over the years there have been numerous games featuring the Xenomorphs from the Alien series with some being fantastic, some being good and some being not so good. Unfortunately Aliens Infestation falls into the not so good category.

Don't get me wrong there are good points to the game like the graphics which are big and vibrant with some parts being a little tense due to the colour and atmosphere of the game. The alien bosses take up a good chunk of the screen when fighting them, the last one in particular. The weapons are really good (a shame that there are not more of them included) and there is a level where you get to ride along in the armoured car like thing and the last boss is huge and there is a tracker and well that's about it. Oh, you can also use a loader to fight bigger aliens with.

I wanted to like this game I really did but there is far too much wrong with it. The plot is the standard fare of a ship being found that contains the aliens aboard it so I won't go into that as it's what you would expect for it to be. What I will go into is everything else as that's where the problems are such the music and sound effects, the music barely changes and after a while the tracker noise just starts to do your head in with the way that it sounds.

Resident Evil 4 tenth anniversary

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the release of Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube, a game that most likely appears in a lot of all-time greatest game lists and deservedly so as it not only revolutionised the Resident Evil franchise but changed the genre that made it's name.

Resident Evil 4 was actually the sixth game in the main series (one, two, three, Zero and Code Veronica being the first five) and some people felt that the series was starting to become stale. The first five games are brilliant games in their own right, yes they have problems which especially now can seem very dated but overall they are some fantastic games.

Anyway, due to the series going stale Capcom took a new approach (well four approaches before settling on this one) with Resi 4 and pretty much dropped the survival horror aspect of the previous games and turned it into an action game that featured the player shooting and killing rather a lot of infected villagers known as Los Ganados. Capcom dropped the Umbrella/zombie storyline and introduced Las Plagas parasites which is what infected the villagers and what tries to kill you all throughout the game.

As per the previous games there are different types of enemies ranging from the standard zombie like villagers who go around in hordes trying to hack you to death or the Garrador who chases you around with
massive Wolverine like claws and the Regenerator who can regenerate limbs and can only be killed by shooting off parasites until it explodes. It's a fun mixture of enemies.

Game map: The history of video games set to the art of cartography

As mentioned in the December 2014 purchases post for Christmas my partner very thoughtfully got me a game map entitled Game Map: The history of video games set to the art of cartography.

In my opinion it is a fantastic looking map and the pictures do not do it justice (especially the blurry one, apologies for that).

The map is broken down into the following sections: Battle Zone, Sim City, Super Mario Land, Pac-Land, Vice City, Killzone, Borderlands and Castlevanis. Within these zones are game names or an area from the game, for example in one section there is The Legend of Zelda and Hyrule Field. There is also The Curious Village and Arkham Asylum alongside Watch Dogs and Chrono Cross.

One of my favourite sections is the street names which are named after games such as Super Street Fighter II, Streets of Rage and Final Fight: Streetwise.

Completed Games December 2014

Nothing, bad end to the year.

December 2014 Purchases

Two game pick-ups and two presents this month, a month that I'm very pleased with.

Silent Hill I've been after for a while so was very pleased when I bought it from a friend whilst I've also been after Indy for a while due to there being an unlockable version of Fate of Atlantis which I've never played before and of which I've heard positive things about.

The socks were my secret Santa present from the RG forum (thank you very much SS) and they are pretty cool in my opinion. The map on the other hand was from my very thoughtful and loving partner and is something that I will go into more in a post in a couple of days time.

Round up of 2014 completed games

The full list of games that I completed in 2014 is as follows:

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga  - DS
Wario: Master of Disguise - DS
42 All-time Classics - DS
Luminous Arc 2 - DS
Aliens Infestation - DS
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars Directors Cut - DS
Colour Cross - DS
Sonic the Hedgehog - DS
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - DS
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 - DS
Resident Evil: Deadly Silence - DS

Only eleven games completed in 2014 with ten being games that I'd never finished before. As mentioned in the top ten list due to circumstances I didn't get to play more games across other formats so I found this years to be disappointing compared to previous years.

It's not to say that the games are bad (though Aliens Infestation was) just that it would have been nice to play more.

Hopefully 2015 will be a lot better.

Top ten games I completed in 2014 (Pt 2)

Welcome to part two of the top ten games that I completed in 2014.

At number five is...

5. Sonic the Hedgehog (DS)

The first and original Sonic game makes it to number five on the list and what a game it is. I was a Nintendo/Mario fan growing up so missed out on the Sonic games originally and despite owning a Mega Drive and the Sonic games for a few years now I've only just gotten round to playing them on this collection.

Due to this I feel that I can appreciate the games more as when I was growing up they seemed to be the complete opposite to Mario with just running through the stage as quick as you can, how wrong I was. Whilst the first couple of levels seem and pretty much can be like that the rest of the game is far from it with some levels really requiring for you to slow down to make jumps and to figure out where to go.

The stages are fantastically varied and the bosses, despite all having the same way of being killed, are varied enough to not feel samey. The graphics still hold up and the music and sound is superb. Overall I'm glad that I waited this long to play the game.


4. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (DS)

So despite all my praise for the first game how come number two ranks higher in the list? It's because it takes everything that made the first game great and somehow manages to add to it.

Adding Tails to the canon was a good move as I like the character due to working well with Sonic. Another good move was upping the speed from the first game and adding the spin dash. Apart from that the game is pretty similar to the first one in the way of how stages are devised and Eggman/Robotnik again being the enemy but again the bosses are varied enough to not feel repetitive. The levels are all nice and varied (though Casino Night zone to be a bit of a pain) and like the third one the difficuly ramps up a little near the end but not so much that it frustrates you.

As evidenced by it's placing I really enjoyed Sonic 2 and found it to be the best of the three games. If like me you still haven't gotten round to playing the original trilogy you really should as they are fantastic games.

Top ten games I completed in 2014 (Pt 1)

It's that time of year again when normally I count down the top ten games that I completed in the previous year. Last year however due to time constraints and electronic issues I only managed to complete eleven and all of them were on the DS. It's just enough to compile the list but sadly it won't be as varied or as strong a line-up as previous years.

So here are my top ten (DS) games that I completed in 2014.

10.Wario: Master of Disguise (DS)

Ah Wario, how I loved Wario World on the GameCube. For your DS outing though I just couldn't muster the same enthusiasm which was a shame as Master of Disguise isn't a terrible game, it's not even a bad game, it's just not a fun game.

As it is with Wario the plot involves trying to become rich but it involves entering a TV to find a talking cane who helps you track down parts of a wish stone that other people are looking for. It's all a little bizarre to be honest and by the end not something that you are really taking much notice of as you are too busy just trying to finish the game.

The graphics are good and the music is OK if a little annoying in places. The game play though is a mixed bag which is a shame as the concept is good with Wario being able to use different costumes to solve puzzles and to find secrets but the actual puzzles and game play is just too repetitive and at times annoying. Master of Disguise had potential but just falls short of being a good game.


9. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (DS)

If I remember correctly Lego Star Wars is the first game to appear on the top ten lists that I have previously completed as for the past couple of years I've only tried to play games that I hadn't played before. It's one that I try and play every Christmas as that was when I first played it and also because it's a fun game like the rest of the Lego games.

After all this time and all of these Lego releases is there that much that I can say about the game. It's fun (so fun that I can bare to play through the Phantom Menace levels) and ridiculous, it makes you smile and sometimes even laugh and the graphics and game play are solid. It gives you a lot of characters to use and a lot of secrets to find as well as providing mini games to play if you want a really quick blast on the game.

Overall I still find LSW to be an enjoyable game and one that I like to play over and over again.

Happy New Year

Happy new year to all the Game Over Yeah readers and followers.

You may have noticed that posts were sorely lacking in 2014, unfortunately this was for many reasons which I won't bore you with but rest assured that for 2015 the posts will be picking up again though this time with some changes.

Due to being just one person who has limited time I cannot unfortunately dedicate as much time to the blog as I would like so I've opened it up to other people for them to be able to use it as an outlet for their thoughts on the gaming world. I'll still be posting as much as I can (as well as finishing off missing posts from last year) but this year I'll be joined by some new friends and people.

Here's to a brighter 2015.